Marianna Scudder  |  Helen Scudder Cochran

Unfortunately, the timing of Silas’ arrival in the Arcot area just inland from Madras couldn’t have been worse. The American Civil War had just broken out and funds from the American Board of Foreign Missions dried up. Some English and Indian friends provided enough money to open a small dispensary, but although he treated over a hundred patients a day, funds ran out after two months and he had to close the clinic down. Silas was stranded with so little money that his wife, Marianna, was forced to wear cast-off dresses donated to her by the sympathetic women of the English colony. “I never knew what color the dresses had originally been,” she later said, “because by the time I got them they were all faded to a dull grey. But I was grateful for them nevertheless.” Marianna (nicknamed “Aunt Mame”) was pretty, cheerful and was a great storyteller with a wonderful sense of humor. She loved to tell the story of her first day at the Arcot mission. She had arrived after a long hot and dusty ride from Madras and asked to take a bath. Shown to a small bathhouse with nothing but a drain in the middle of the floor she took off her clothes. She realized there was no plumbing when a male voice from above said politely “If the Doraisani will move a little closer to the center I’ll be able to pour the water over her.” Startled the nude Mrs. Silas looked up and saw an Indian crouched on the high rim of the building with several earthen water jars beside him. Welcome to India!

While waiting for money to start a hospital Silas spent his time learning the local Ayurvedic medicine, especially the use of herbs and training a young local man to compound medicines for him. Finally, in 1866, when the Civil War ended the Mission Board finally sent enough money to open a small hospital. At first the local authorities warned people that anyone entering the hospital would be forced to become a Christian. The poor believed this and stayed away. But the upper-class Brahmins who had received medical care from Silas’ brother Dr. Henry came in great numbers. Dr. Silas’ reputation was also enhanced when he saved the life of the local ruler, the Muslim Nawab who had been bitten by a cobra. The Nawab donated a bag of gold for the hospital and saying, “And here is something for you!” removed an emerald ring from his finger and gave it to the startled doctor. (The ring is now in the possession of Dr. Silas’ great-great grandson, Dr. James Hamilton Taylor).

The new hospital became so popular that within six months the Madras government closed down its civil dispensary and handed over to Silas the buildings, furniture and stock in hand together with half the money allowed the dispensary. These buildings had originally been English Army barracks and were to serve as the Ranipet Hospital for 50 years until the new Scudder Memorial Hospital opened in 1928. Dr. Silas also had the strong support of Lord Napier, the English governor of Madras, who induced the British government to sponsor needed improvements to the hospital. Dr. Silas had been operating with just the light from a hole cut through the thatched roof until Lord Napier provided funds for a skylight over the operating table.

The work was long and arduous. “If the Lord gives me health and strength I don’t care how hard the work may be. But someone ought to be getting ready to take if from my hands should I be disabled,” he wrote home. He was only able to afford one assistant, a dresser, but finally received permission to start training medical assistants. Dr. Silas Scudder is credited with providing the first Christian medical training in India in 1868. Since there were no medical books printed in the local Tamil language and the students knew no English, this was no mean feat! By 1870 two of his trainees were ready to go out into the villages and open branch dispensaries.

The hospital was a reality but by 1870 the long hours and stress had destroyed Dr. Silas’ health. He developed an abscess of the lung, a sequel to amoebic dysentery and pneumonia. He stayed until 1872 when his younger brother, John, arrived to take over the hospital. Dr. Silas Scudder returned to New York and lingered as a semi-invalid until his death at the age of 44 in 1877. His wife, Marianna, lived with her daughter, Helen, and son-in-law, Rev. Joseph Cochran, and their sons Hamilton and Jerrold until Helen’s death in 1914.

Drs. Lewis Rousseau and Galen Scudder

Silas’s nephew, Dr. Lewis Rousseau Scudder, William’s son, took over the Ranipet hospital in 1888 but by 1899 the hospital had badly deteriorated. The roof leaked so badly (monkeys had pulled the tiles off) that the staff had to hold umbrellas over the beds of the patients to keep them dry. Because the skylight provided the only light in the operating room operations were restricted to sunny days when the heat became so intense that the doctor often became dizzy while working.

Dr. Lew became determined to build a new hospital and he decided that the Scudders should dedicate it as a memorial to their grandparents, Dr. John and Harriet Scudder. He helped found The Scudder Memorial Association in 1912 whose purpose was to raise the funds for the hospital. Marianna Scudder and her daughter, Helen and Helen’s husband, Rev. Joseph Cochran and their son, Hamilton, were at the founding luncheon for the Association. In 1919, on the centenary of the sailing of Pioneer John from Boston to India, the cornerstone of the new hospital was laid on recently acquired property near the old hospital in Ranipet. Finally, in 1928, Scudder Memorial Hospital was opened, a lovely building nicknamed “the Taj Mahal of South India” because of its dome.

In 1920 Dr. Lew’s son, Galen, arrived and took over the hospital and ran it until 1954. He and his medical assistant, Dr. Julius Savarirayan, opened a leprosy annex to the hospital. Eventually sixteen leprosy treatment centers were opened in the North Arcot District serviced by Scudder Memorial Hospital’s mobile service covering 400 square miles and reaching more than 300,000 people. Dr. Galen and Dr. Savarirayan were able to give leprosy sufferers back the use of their hands (and their lives) with the operation pioneered by Dr. Paul Brand at Vellore C.M.C. Hospital. Dr. Julius became the Chief Surgeon and Medical Superintendent of Scudder Memorial Hospital upon Dr. Galen Scudder’s retirement. During his term he built a wall around the whole hospital compound to keep out stray cattle, donkeys and goats. Known as “Julius, the Builder”, with the financial aid of The Scudder Association and the Madras government, he was able to add a nurses’ home, a second story to the hospital, a library and chapel. Dr. Savarirayan continued his work with leprosy even after his retirement.

Dr. Ida Scudder

Ida Scudder was born at her father’s mission in Arcot, South India, in 1870. After having given birth to five boys, her mother, Sophia, could only gasp, “A girl! I don’t believe it!” The family adored their golden-haired, blue-eyed “Bonny” but being a missionary’s daughter meant hard work, not all of it easy or pleasant. In 1875 and 1876 the monsoons failed and the famine that followed the crop failure was one of India’s most deadly. Ida’s father, Dr. John Scudder II, opened a relief camp, treating 1200 people the first day. Dr. Scudder and his family concentrated on feeding the children under twelve, his sons making sure they ate the food before they left the camp and didn’t hide it in their rags for their parents and older siblings. Millions died from starvation and cholera and Ida’s memories of walking skeletons and the dead lying in the gutters remained with her for the rest of her life.

When Ida was eight her father bought a farm in Nebraska and took the family home to America. He needed to be able to earn enough money to educate his children but he was never successful as a farmer and after five years he returned to India to the missionary work he loved. Sophia stayed on in Nebraska with the children for another year. The boys were sent East to school and Ida was sent to stay with an aunt and uncle in Chicago and finally on to Northfield School in Massachusetts which had been founded by Dwight Moody for the children of missionaries. Ida loved Northfield and was set to go on to college when she received a telegram from her father saying that her mother was ill and instructing her to come to India immediately.

“Three Knocks in the Night”

Dr. Ida Scudder’s Story of Her Decision to Become a Missionary Doctor

It was a warm, pleasant June afternoon in 1890. Outside the large mullioned window the fragrant roses and the soft green hills of western Massachusetts were lost on me and my best friend, Annie Hancock, as we sat stunned in our dorm room. As Annie and I sat on the bed staring at the cable in my hand, me, in my flowered muslin dress with my fair hair piled untidily on top my head, I shook my head in disbelief. Annie, small and intense, her brunette head bowed low with mine re-read the cable. A ray of sunlight danced over our contrasting heads. We had just graduated from the Northfield School for Girls and were looking forward to a fall of college parties and dances. This simple piece of paper in my hand had changed all that. “I just can’t believe it!” I gasped my eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Ida,” Annie sighed and squeezed my hand in sympathy.

I was a missionary daughter. My grandfather, Dr. John Scudder, the first medical missionary sent out from the United States, had sailed from Boston to Ceylon in1819. My own father, John, also a doctor, and the youngest of seven missionary sons had been serving in India for thirty years. I was born at my parent’s mission in India but had been sent to the Northfield School for my education. I had a reputation as the light-hearted instigator of pranks that often landed me in trouble. Annie, quiet and spiritual, had fit in more easily at a school that catered to missionary daughters. Annie and I, as different in personality as our coloring, had been best friends and inseparable since our freshman year often discussing our views on religion.

“I will never return to India!” I vowed to Annie, my blue eyes snapping. “I am not going to become one of those ‘Scudder Missionaries’. Over thirty members of my family have already filled that role and they don’t need one more!” The other girls may have admired me for being independent and determined. But I had told no one about the recurring nightmares I suffered of the starving children I had witnessed during the terrible famine of 1875 when over five million people had died. I had had enough of India. I wanted a normal life of fun, romance, and friends.

Then the cable had arrived, “Come Immediately. Your mother ill and needs you.” I had five brothers; and as my parent’s only daughter I knew there was no choice but to answer the call to take over my ill mother’s responsibilities at the mission. So, with a heavy heart, I booked passage on the next available ship to India along with my brother, Walter.

The trip from the dock in Madras to the mission at Tindivanam was hot, dusty, and miserable. I’d forgotten about the unrelenting sun, the cawing crows, the smells of incense and cow dung, spices, and smoke. And the people! They were everywhere! I sighed and thought of the quiet cool hills of Massachusetts. At the mission compound the whitewashed bungalow my parents called home consisted of three small rooms in a row, each one opening onto a long porch. The floor was packed mud with a layer of crumbled lime on top. White ants living in the thatched roof occasionally dropped onto the humans below. I hated it.

My mother, Sophia Scudder, was recovering from malaria, but slowly. My father was often away visiting the Christian congregations he had established in the villages of the area so Mother had been left to carry on as mission manager and head of the boys’ boarding school the couple had established. It was a lonely post.

“I see foreigners so rarely,” my mother told me, “that when I had the chance to speak English last spring I talked so much that I spent the next three months repenting!”

“This life may suit you,” I thought to myself. “but it’s not what I want! I’m going back to America and college as soon as you are well and can take over again.” But there was no time to think about life back home. With guidance from my father, I threw myself into running the school and when he left again on a mission trip, the mission as well.

One evening a few months after my arrival, I was sitting in my hot, stifling room answering a letter from Annie. “I so envy your exciting life as a missionary,” Annie had written. “I wish that I could also enter the foreign mission field.”

“ I’m not a missionary and never will be!” I had written in my reply, underlining the sentence with a fierce black line. “You are far more spiritual than I ever will be and you would probably like the missionary life. But I don’t. It’s not meant for me!” No sooner had I written that sentence when I heard a discreet cough (the gentle Indian call for attention) and a knock at my door. I picked up my lamp, went to the door and opened it. A young, dignified man wearing the spotless white garb of the highest Brahmin Hindu caste stood in the doorway.

“Can I do anything to help you?” I asked, noticing that the man’s hands were trembling with anxiety.

“Oh, yes,” the young man replied in excellent, cultured English. “I desperately need your help. My young wife, a girl of only fourteen, is dying in childbirth. The barber woman can do nothing for her and says she must die. I had heard that you have come from America and I thought you might save her!”

“Oh, no!” I said firmly. “I am not the one you want. You need my father, the doctor. I don’t know anything about childbirth. I’ll go get him.”

“You don’t understand,” the young Brahmin said. “No man outside my family has ever looked upon her. No man, even a doctor, can tend to my wife. She will have to die.”

“Oh, no! Please wait here!” I cried and ran to my parents’ bedroom. I brought my father back to the young man where we both reasoned with him to change his mind to let my father save his young wife. But the man shook his head sadly. “Then you will not come?” he said softly to me, turned and walked steadily out the door.

“I just don’t understand,” I cried to my father.

“It is because it would violate his caste law, and he is a very religious man and feels he can’t break it. We must respect that. You already know that,” he gently reminded me. I went back to my room and started writing Annie about the strange knock at my door. I knew about the religious philosophy of Hinduism and had visited the zennas (the women’s quarters in Indian homes). They had shocked me. These women lived most of their lives behind four walls stifled by custom and culture. I found it difficult to explain this to Annie.

About an hour later I heard another cough and knock. I flew to the door thinking that the young man had changed his mind and come back to get my father to save his laboring wife. But to my surprise a different young man, a Muslim this time, dressed in a long, buttoned coat and white brocaded cap stood wringing his hands in the doorway.

“Salaam, Madam. May Allah give you peace. Please can you help me? It’s my wife. She has had other children, but this little one won’t come out. The midwife has given up and I’m afraid she will die. Will you come?” I stood there stunned. This couldn’t be happening again.

“Wait here!” I cried and brought my father out to speak with the man.

“You don’t understand our ways, Sir and Madam,” the young man said. “Only the men of our immediate household can enter a Muslim woman’s apartment. It is you, Madam, to whom I come for help.”

“But I can’t help her. I’m not even a nurse. I don’t know anything about childbirth, absolutely nothing. I’d be glad to help you if I could!”

“Then my wife must die,” the man said resignedly. “It is the will of Allah.” After the young Muslim left I fell apart. My father tried to comfort me.

“You must learn how to forget, my dear. If there is nothing you can do to change an impossible situation, it is the part of wisdom to forget it.” Back in my room I felt the need for my best friend more than ever. I started to write Annie about the amazing the coincidence of the two young men coming to my door with the same tragic story but words failed me. I picked up my Bible to try to find some comfort in scripture but I simply couldn’t concentrate. Finally, exhausted, I lay down on my bed staring at the ceiling.

Suddenly I heard another cough and knock. Convinced that my mind was playing tricks on my frazzled nerves I opened the door. There stood a third, lower caste local Hindu man standing with tears running down his face. It didn’t take long for him to blurt out the same, dreadful story. His child bride was dying in childbirth. Sadly, he turned and left when I told him I couldn’t help him. I didn’t even bother to wake Father. My letter to Annie lay forgotten.

There was no sleep for me that night. As the gray dawn appeared I heard the funeral drums and sent a servant into the village to find out what had happened to the girls.

“I am sorry, Madam,” he said. “They are all dead.” My mind whirled. My father had told me to forget. But how could I? I thought of my dreams of college dances and a happy home with a husband and children. Could I give it all up to get the medical training I would need to save the lives of women dying from a lack of female doctors in this foreign country? But I knew the answer. I could never live with the thought of those three girls on my conscience, dying, and doing nothing about it. I simply could not and would not forget them. I glanced at the letter to Annie sitting unfinished on my desk.

I realized in an instant that my vows to never serve as a missionary seemed shallow and selfish in the light of the three knocks at my door in the dark of night. Shaking the weariness from my body, I squared my shoulders and walked into my parents’ bedroom study.

“Last night,” I announced, “God sent me a message. I’m going to America to study to be a doctor so I can come back here and help the women of India!”*[1]

Ida Scudder went to America and enrolled at the Women’s Medical School in Philadelphia. Then, just as she was about to enter her senior year, Cornell Medical College in New York received an endowment of $1.5 million with the proviso that women be admitted on an equal basis with men. Ida and her close friend, Nell Bartholomew, bicycled from Philadelphia to New York to take advantage of the opportunity and graduated from Cornell Medical School in the first class to graduate women in 1899. (Today Dr. Ida Scudder’s portrait hangs at Cornell Medical College).

At the age of thirty Ida returned to India in 1900 along with Nell Bartholomew who then married her missionary brother, Rev. Walter Scudder. Ida began her medical work out of her father’s missionary bungalow which was soon overflowing with patients. She opened her first hospital in 1902 and began training Indian women as assistants. Soon she became determined to follow her dream and began to train women doctors, doctors who could save the women of India who were not allowed to be treated by male doctors. She taught every class herself to the first batch of girls and when they went to Madras to take their final exams the head doctor told her not to be too disappointed if her girls didn’t pass. Not only did every one of her students pass, they took top honors. Dr. Ida was on her way. Her school friend from Northfield, Annie Hancock, also realized her dream and joined Ida in India as a missionary.

Over the years Dr. Ida became a fixture on the lecture circuit returning to the States often to raise money for her women’s medical college and hospital. She became one of the most famous women of her day earning the Order of the British Empire. (She once received a letter addressed simply “Dr. Ida, India” which earned her a place in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”) Her small hospital and school grew to become the co-educational Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital, today one of the premier medical centers in India. Her niece, Dr. Ida B. Scudder, followed in her aunt’s footsteps. She trained as a doctor and founded the radiology department at Vellore CMC & H, serving there for over thirty years. Dr. Ida B. Scudder retired in 1970, the last of the missionary Scudders to serve full-time in India.

Dr. Ida B. Scudder

Dr. Ida B. and Dr. Galen Scudder, Director of Scudder Memorial Hospital

Between 1819 and 1970 forty-three members of Pioneer John’s family: sons, grandsons, nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews and their wives, gave 1,074 years of missionary service in India. They trained doctors and nurses, and built hospitals, primary and secondary schools and industrial schools. Some stayed only a few years in India; several of the wives died of disease and all suffered from the intense heat. Dr. Ida’s mother (Mrs. John II) served the longest: 64 years, but six others, including Dr. Ida, served for more than 45 years in India.

• Dr. Lewis Rousseau Scudder, Jr. and his wife Dorothy served as missionaries in Iraq and Kuwait.
• Dr. Lewis Jr.’s son, Rev. Lewis R. Scudder III and his wife Nancy served as head of the Near East Council of Churches in Bahrein.
• Dr. Lewis Jr.’s daughter, Dr. Marilyn Scudder, an ophthalmologist, served in Tanzania flying her team of doctors and nurses to outlying parts of Africa.
• Dr. Doremus Scudder, a son of Henry Martyn, was a missionary in Japan and Hawaii and Director of Refugee Relief in Siberia for the American Red Cross during World War I.
• Myron T. Scudder, a son of Dr. Ezekiel, was a pioneer in progressive education, who introduced the Montessori Method in New York, helped found the Campfire Girls of America and was a professor of education at Rutgers and the University of Virginia. He helped John Dewey in originating the Dewey Decimal System of classification.
• Rev. Frank Scudder, another son of Dr. Ezekiel, was a missionary in Japan and Hawaii where he founded the Church of the Crossroads in Honolulu, the first integrated church where people of all nationalities were welcomed.
• Isabelle Scudder Farrington, daughter of Dr. Ezekiel, and her husband, Ernest owned and ran Chevy Chase Junior College in Washington, DC. The legacy of Chevy Chase College to The Scudder Association in 1951 and its sale has allowed The Scudder Association to continue its philanthropic work to the Scudder hospitals in Ranipet and Vellore and to provide scholarships for students pursuing education or medicine.
• Bradford Scudder, a grandson of Dr. Jared, was a missionary in Africa.
• William Stanes, a grandson of Dr. John I, was known as “The Children’s Missionary” in South America.
• Frances Scudder, daughter of Rev. William Waterbury Scudder, was one of the founders of Connecticut College for Women.
• Kenyon Scudder, a grandson of William Waterbury, a superintendent of the California Institute for Men at Chino, California, was a world-renowned leader in prison reform. His book, Prisoners are People was made into the movie, Unchained.
• Lewis Scudder, stayed in Nebraska after his father John returned to India. He became a missionary to the Native American Winnebagos and the Iroquois in New York State. His daughter, Ida Belle, followed his sister, Dr. Ida, to Vellore to serve from 1931-1970 as the beloved Dr. Ida B.

Today Dr. Silas’ great-great grandson, Dr. James Hamilton Taylor, a radiation oncologist, his wife, Dr. Susan Pepper Taylor, a pediatric cardiac anesthesiologist, and their daughter, Dr. Allison Taylor, have all volunteered at Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore. Dr. James Taylor has connected the Medical College of Wisconsin radiation oncology department with the oncology department at CMC. In 2018, the 100th anniversary of CMC’s medical education, Dr. Susan Taylor and CMC’s Dr. Anna Pulimood signed a memorandum of understanding between the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Christian Medical College and Hospital to move toward sharing and exchanging ideas, collaborating on resident exchange programs and seeking to partner in other areas of education and research. Daughter, Dr. Allison Taylor, spent her fourth-year MCW elective rotating through CMC’s Infectious Disease, Intensive Care and Low-Cost Effective Care clinics and is an example of how this collaboration can inspire medical students from both India and the U.S.